


it is funny, you will be dead some day

by callitwhatyouwant



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst?, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, it's not very good tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 08:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4954195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callitwhatyouwant/pseuds/callitwhatyouwant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saint Steven's story goes like this: as he bleeds out the skies part and he sees the heavens. Steven Rogers' story doesn't go like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it is funny, you will be dead some day

**Author's Note:**

> Yo, so this has been hanging around in my files for more than a year now, cold and lonely. It was supposed to be a compilation of scenes from Steve and Bucky's life, which inspired another idea, and in turn another idea, that are in (unsuccessful) progress. I don't know what to do with it, or my life, anymore, so here you go. This whole thing happened because of Lakehouse by Of Monsters and Men.
> 
> Title is from a poem by e. e. cummings.

Steve is ten years old and he has been almost dying for most of them. He only recognizes the faces of his mother and Bucky.  
He wants to be like Bucky when he grows up.  
_

There's a beat-up copy of This Side of Paradise on Steve's nightstand. It's one of the few things he inherited from his mother, (along with her frail build and hair blond as straw and big blue eyes), or at least one of the few things she hadn't sold to buy Steve's medicine.  
_

(Steve doesn't know what he inherited from his father because he died before Steve was born. All he knows is that his dad was stronger than he is and enlisted, or was drafted, it doesn't matter much to Steve. His mother had a picture of his father in uniform that she used to show him as a baby, but she forgot to take it out of her silver locket before she sold it. Joseph Rogers' pension didn't cover the bills, so in a way he deserved it.)

He draws Brooklyn at sunrise a lot and he doesn't know whom he got that from either, but he likes to think it's all his own. The corners of Bucky's mouth go down and he nods and says a mocking “not bad” one morning before going down to the docks. Steve grins and smacks Bucky's arm with his sketchbook.  
(He doesn't care where he got it from.)  
_

(Nancy gives Bucky his first kiss on his fifteenth birthday, and it's as good as he'd always imagined. It's just that her hair is too long.)  
_

It's so hot on Steve's fifteenth birthday. Bucky's hair is plastered to his forehead and his skin is blotched red down his chest and he bought Steve a piece of cake from the bakery down the street.

(It's a lie. Bucky stole it. He needs to save up for the cold.)

They're cross-legged on the floor beneath the window, knees touching and eyes raised to the red, white, and blue of the fireworks as Steve's mum scavenges in her kitchen drawers for a candle. 

Bucky bends down and touches his lips to Steve's. 

Steve chokes and coughs for a long time but it's barely audible over the fireworks and his mother never notices. 

(Steve's coughed himself dizzy a million times before, until he saw blood in his handkerchief, and thought he's surely about to die.)

(He doesn't mind if he coughs to death from Bucky's lips.)

(They never talk about it, anyway.)  
_

Steve's chest doesn't rattle with every breath for the first time in weeks and Bucky's face lights up. He says he found them two girls to go dancing, to celebrate living through the winter. 

(He doesn't say that out loud, of course.)

“You'll like Ruth, I swear.”

(Steve wants to say “But I like you first and second and third”, but he feels silly.)

He bites the insides of his cheeks and watches Bucky change into his going-out suit.

“Sure, Buck.”  
_

(At the bottom of the chest Steve keeps the rest of his mum's clothes, there's a bound sketchbook with pages full of Bucky's face from every angle, of his naked chest as he sleeps after a long day out, the smile he gives every girl that meets his eye.)

(Steve makes sure Bucky doesn't find it.)  
_

(Bucky finds Steve's sketchbook seventy years later and stares at Steve for a long time, as if his face holds all the answers.)  
_

On the day Bucky hears his numbers on the radio, he stays out later than usual. He goes to the recruitment center and the first thing he does in his uniform is break a guy's nose for Steve. 

(Steve doesn't know Bucky never enlisted. Their radio is broken).  
_

(There are charcoal marks on the wall from when Mrs. Rogers used to measure their height. Pairs of marks close together, until one side starts lagging behind, then stops all together.)  
_

They're on their way home when Mr. Hume's bullet splashes his starving dog's brain out across the pavement.

(It's merciful and generous and Bucky loves him for it.)  
_

Peggy is so beautiful, with her deep brown eyes and red lips and perfectly curled hair and strong features. And Steve loves her, because she still looks at him the way she did before.

(Steve loves Peggy, but sometimes-  
_

Steve kneels down and holds his hands together and raises his eyes to the Brooklyn skyline and prays out loud for the poor and for the soldiers and for the Jews and for a chance to fight. 

Bucky is on his knees next to him, but Steve doesn't know what he prays for; his lips never move.

(Bucky is selfish and prays for himself.)  
_

The first time he meets Bucky, Steve thinks he's there to punch him. He looks like a bully, hair messy and eyes wild and teeth bared in a crazy grin. He punches the fat kid with the fist in Steve's shirt, though, and that settles it.  
_

Bucky doesn't write Steve back. He keeps the letters from Steve in his breast pocket and burns his own. He doesn't know what to write, doesn't want to complain.  
_

Here's the thing about Bucky and the war: he doesn't want to go home. But he doesn't want to die, either. He fights like he used to lean out over Brooklyn Bridge as far as he could without falling, but with no genuine desire not to fall.  
_

When Bucky opens his eyes all he sees is Steve's face and red alarm lights like brimstone. The screams and wailing sirens pierce his ears, and he curses God, because Steve's haunting him into Hell.

(He locks his fingers around Steve's wrists and whispers his name like he used to in the dark back home. It's easier than breathing.)  
_

(Bucky's father jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge on Black Tuesday.)  
_

Bucky doesn't want to go home. But he doesn't want to die, either. He doesn't write Steve back because he hopes he wouldn't have to see him again. 

(That's a lie, too. He'd do anything to see Steve.)  
_

(Bucky is selfish. He prays to die, because Hell can't be as bad as this.)  
_

Steve and Bucky don't talk too often theses days. 

(Bucky doesn't know what to say. “ Did you take your medicine?” and “Stop picking fights, you fucking asshole” are now out of place. Steve's here to fight and he has a beautiful woman to wipe the blood off his face. So Bucky just stays behind and stops breathing for two seconds before he pulls the trigger and kills a middle-aged man in dark green uniform. The man had a name and a family and probably wasn't even a Nazi, but Bucky doesn't think about it too much.)  
_

James loves Natalia. She is smart and beautiful and strong. If he ever has a daughter, he wants her to be like Natalia. He loves her fiery hair and light, light eyes. Her eyes remind him of someone he can't quite grasp.

(Her eyes remind him of Rebecca's, or maybe Steve's. But he doesn't know that.)

He helps her escape and tells her not to look back.  
_

They take away his memories of Natalia. They send him after her with a rifle.  
_

Before the war, Steve fell asleep with Bucky curled around him on a mattress pushed to the wall. Bucky's fingers fit perfectly in the valleys between the ridges of Steve's ribs.  
_

(Now in the trenches, Steve rarely falls asleep. His ribs are invisible. Bucky's fingers fit perfectly around his rifle. He rarely falls asleep, either.)  
_

Steve gets piles of letters from the States. He gets letters from mothers proud of him as if he was their own. He gets scented letters and notes on the back of black and white pictures of a thousand girls who wish him well and promise to wait for him back at the harbour. 

(Bucky watches Steve read his letters and wishes he'd sent him back any, wants to write him every minute of every day to get that smile on his face.)

(Bucky wonders if any of Steve's letters come from poor Brooklyn boys who want him, who think they love him and whisper his name before falling asleep.  
It's obvious, of course. A letter from a fairy would never find its way to Steve.)

(Bucky doesn't really care, though. He knows they don't love Steve like he loves him. If they did, they'd be here, burning in this hell with him.)  
_

Bucky knows why he's here. In the moment before he pulls the trigger, he wonders why the guy on the end of his rifle is. He wonders what he did to be sent here, to deserve a slug to the forehead from a monster like Bucky. Wonders what Steve ever did to-  
(He doesn't think about it for long, though. His finger presses the trigger and his eyes are blurry from the lack of oxygen and his body rattles from the force of the shot. Steve gives him a grateful salute. Bucky swallows and nods.)  
_

Steve is barely twenty-two when he learns America has joined the war. Bucky decides Steve needs to learn to fight. He drags him up to the roof and punches him like none of the bullies had before. Steve is scared of Bucky's eyes, dark with loathing. He's scared and confused and he lifts both hands in the air and asks “what's wrong, Buck?” in a whisper, as if Bucky is the one hurt, as if the blood on his knuckles isn't Steve's.  
Steve pretends he can't hear Bucky crying in the bathroom.  
Bucky fits his fingers in the valley between Steve's ribs tighter than usual, and Steve pretends it doesn't hurt.  
Steve pretends he can't feel the hot tears fall onto his neck that night.  
(They never talk about it, anyway.)  
_

(Bucky is selfish and a liar, he curls his body around Steve's to stay warm.)  
_

Bucky often remembers seeing the Red Skull take off his human face.  
(He wonders what he'd look like if he dug his muddy nails into his skin and peeled it off.)  
_

Hell is a lot different from what the nuns had said. It's much colder, for one thing. The smell of smoke doesn't stand against the insistent rain and too many people here don't belong here.  
_

“Why didn't you jump out?” Bucky asks without taking his eyes off the sunrise. His breath is steady, slow, if it got any slower he'd stop breathing all together, just like the second before a slug flies out of his rifle, like he's on to something.  
“What?”  
“Why didn't you jump out? Before the plane hit the ice?”  
_

Steve spent more time almost dying than he spent living.  
(At least that's what Bucky remembers.)  
_

Steve goes to the Smithsonian and stares at Bucky. And for a few moments there are two Steves staring at Bucky, one stuck in black and white, with a perpetual smile, and another stuck in colour, with an ache in his chest.  
(When Bucky goes to the Smithsonian, he looks at himself. Bucky is selfish.)  
_

Bucky rests his back against cold, cold brick outside an old door in a back alley. He pretends he can't hear wood creaking or middle-aged men moaning or fake high-pitched laughs.

His mother walks out, coat half buttoned and hair messy, red lipstick running off her lips.  
“Oh, baby, you must be so cold,” she smiles at him warmly, grips both his hands hand in hers and lefts them to her face, presses kisses to his knuckles, but her fingers are not as warm as her cheeks. He pretends he doesn't notice the looks his mother gets on the way home or how her cold fingers are too tight on his.  
They stop by a Salvation Army and spend fifty cents on used gloves for him and Rebecca. He picks a pair that's a little too snug that finds its way around Steve's fingers, anyway.  
_

Ruth is swell, she really is. She's nice and has a good smile and pretends not to stare at Bucky too much. Steve thinks to an outsider it looks like Bucky is the sun and they all just spin around him until they're dazed and breathless.  
“Well, if you ladies would excuse me. Got a class early tomorrow,” he says as he gets up from the booth and tries his best to look apologetic. His eyes meet Bucky's, who just raises his eyebrows,  
“See ya, Buck.”  
(Steve is a liar. He doesn't have class in the morning. He goes to that part of the neighbourhood and sways his hips down an alley and lets some dark-haired bright-eyed boy push him against the wall and lick his way down Steve's throat. Bucky doesn't ask, of course, and Steve doesn't tell.)  
_

Bucky's bones ache and his joints are frozen from the cold of the trench seeping into his body. There is mud mixed in with his blood under his fingernails and inside his boots. He closes his eyes and slows down his breathing, the air inside his chest is heavy, pierces his lungs whenever his ribs moves. 

“We got cookies. Chocolate chip.” 

Bucky wants to take a swing at Steve, wants to shout “This is war, you dumb fuck, and there is nothing you can do!” but his breath catches in his throat. In the glow of the gas-lamp, holding an ugly red tin, Steve looks little again. His hair has grown longer, ash and mud and ice in with the blond. His bread has grown, too, and Bucky wants to grab a razor and shave it off like he first did after he learned how to shave and Steve had eight hairs on his chin. His eyes are the same, though. Their blue is dulled with the same look he had whenever the priest left his room, whenever he asked Bucky to hold his hand through the night. 

And Bucky just wants to cry, wants to crawl to Steve's feet through the mud, wants to grab fistfuls of it and stuff his ears and his eyes and his stomach so he doesn't need him anymore. He needs him, needs to lick the blood off his face and the snow off his eyelashes, needs to feel Steve's hands and his heat. He's hungry, he needs to kiss, needs to chew Steve's lips and lick the sugar off the back of his teeth, needs to breathe him in, to suck the breath out of him and just swallow him whole. 

He just waves his hand in dismiss.  
_

The night before Bucky ships out Steve pushes him against the door and kisses him until he's dizzy. He clenches his fingers in Bucky's hair and bites his lips and tries to take him inside.  
He shoves him onto the mattress and grinds his teeth against the tears and presses kisses and whispered “come back”s into his ears and against his shoulders and in the dip between his collarbones and on the back of his hands and the insides of his wrists and in the juts of his hips and the back of his knees and the soles of his feet.  
And Bucky just lies there, shuddering and unable to breathe, with his eyes wet and dazed and staring at Steve's sweat slicked hair and flushed chest and red lips, fingers twisted in the mattress to stop himself from touching.  
_

Steve's eyes flutter closed and he bites his lip and moans and his fingers dig in Bucky's sides, leaving black marks against his ribs. He hears Bucky's chocked gasp as he comes but misses his lips wrapped silently around his name.  
_

Steve covers Bucky's body with his, their sweaty chests touching inch for inch, legs locked around his waist and one arm wrapped around his neck and a hand running through his hair.

“Promise me you'll come back, Buck,” Steve whispers against his temple.

Bucky keeps his eyes closed and stops breathing and pretends he can't hear.  
_

Right before Steve's plane hits the water, he doesn't take his eyes off Peggy's face and her voice fills his ears.  
_

Right before Steve's lungs give out, he sees Bucky's smile and hears a “ Goodnight, Stevie” breathed against the back of his neck.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, I don't really know where to go with it anymore, maybe I'll recycle it eventually into something else, if I ever finish something else. Say what you will, friends, all are welcome. I'm [egipci](http://egipci.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


End file.
